Shampoo
by Nez
Summary: Rinse. Lather. Repeat. Ryou and Bakura try to deal with separation anxiety. BR slash.


**Shampoo**

**By Nez (eschergrl@yahoo.com)**

**Rating: PG**

**Disclaimer:  Yu-Gi-Oh isn't mine (surprise surprise).  Neither is Clover- this fic was inspired by and semi-includes a scene from the wonderful volume four.  **

*********

            The water wasn't warm enough yet.

            Ryou crouched beside the tub, frowning, his knees brushing against the fluffy white towel he'd tossed on the floor.  He twisted the screechily protesting knob to the right, and dabbled his fingers under the thundering lukewarm flood of water that poured from the faucet.  Out of the corner of his eye, he saw that Bakura was trying to hide the fact that he was shivering.

            Ryou hesitated before turning towards his counterpart, suggesting quietly, "Do you want to sit in the tub while the water warms up?  You won't be as cold that way."

            Bakura, teeth clenched tight to stop them from chattering, fixed his hikari with a penetrating glare, obviously reluctant to admit weakness.  But when a full-body shiver rippled bumpily over his skin, he grudgingly nodded and stepped past him, sliding easily into the tub.  Ryou carefully forced his cheek muscles not to twitch into a smile as the rubber ducky swim trunks rustled past his face.  No matter how many times he saw Bakura in them, he couldn't squash the urge to giggle.  Bakura glared at him, knowing exactly what was going through his mind.

            "Why is the only pair of water-proof pants you own covered in _ducks?" he snarled, splashing sullenly at the water._

            "Do you want me to wash your hair or not?" Ryou chided, reaching over him to grab his yami's favorite shampoo.  His arm brushed against Bakura's goose bump-prickled shoulder.  "Insult my wardrobe and I'm not doing anything for you."

            Bakura snorted, noting the gently teasing note in his hikari's voice, but fell silent anyway.  His toes dabbled uncertainly at the water.

            Ryou sat back on his heels and watched his yami thoughtfully.  "How was your week?" he asked quietly.  The questions _where were you?  How is your new body?  Do you miss me at **all?  Why do you come back every week? remained unspoken, although they clamored tightly in the back of Ryou's throat.**_

            "None of your business," was the gruff reply, and Ryou watched as Bakura's back muscles coiled up into tense knots under his smooth, white skin.  

            Ryou forced himself not to care.

~~~~~~~~~

            /I want my own body./

            //Yes, I know, Yami.//  Ryou's exhaustion seeped into his mental link, weighing it down like lead.  //You only tell me how useless I am as a host around once or twice a day.//

            There was a pause before Bakura responded.  Ryou fiddled with his pencil and stared fixedly at the math problem before him, pretending to concentrate.  The pencil slipped, and graphite smeared darkly across the tips of his fingers.

            _f'(x) = 4x3+2_

            /Insolent today, are we?/  Bakura's voice uncoiled through the back of his mind like the hiss of crimson silk, heated and dark.  /I believe I'm beginning to rub off on you./

            Sighing heavily, Ryou buried his head in his hands, his fingers and shoulder muscles spasming in barely controlled frustration.  His eyes bored into the slightly crumpled sheet of paper before him until the numbers blurred and wavered.

            //What do you need, Yami?  I'm trying to finish my math here.//

            _f'(x) = 4x3+2  what is the second derivative?_

            There was another pause.  The orange cat clock he'd had since he was two ticked loudly through the sudden hush.  Ryou began to wonder if his yami had retreated back to his soul room.

            _What is the second derivative?_

            /We're going to the graveyard tonight./

            Ryou dropped his pencil again.  This time it rolled with a startled clatter under his desk.  He straightened sharply, ignoring it, alarm showing clearly in his widened brown eyes.

            //**_What??_  Yami, what are you...//**

            He was cut off as the ring suddenly erupted into a furious swell of light, and Ryou could only watch in paralyzed shock as he melted deeper into his body, out of his skin.  His body abruptly stood up, sending his chair skittering sharply across the floor, and stalked out of the room.

            /No Calculus for you tonight./  Yami's voice echoed and bounced darkly off the walls of his soul room, reverberating deeply in the hollow drum of his chest.  Wide eyed and confused, Ryou shivered.  /I'm getting us some bodies./

************

            Bakura jammed the tan rubber plug into the drain, his fingers lingering momentarily under the heated flow of water.  Ryou watched quietly as his Yami's pale fingers flushed an angry, splotched red.  Steam, tinged metallic with blistering heat, twined softly around his arms, torso, hair.  It settled around them in a comforting, heavy fog.

            Bakura liked his water hot.

            Harsh, irritated patches of red spiderwebbed over his white legs as the water level rose.  Perspiration beaded and trickled down his neck and forehead.  His viciously spiky hair softened, glistened with sweat, clung in straggling silver strands to his damp forehead.

            Bakura sighed and melted into the heat.

~~~~~~~~~~

            If he could, he would vomit.

            The earthy, rotting pungence of decomposing flesh thickened the air of his soul room, and there was nothing Ryou could do to block it out.  He suddenly remembered with shocking clarity the dead alleycat he'd found in his back yard eight years ago; remembered the rusty, blood matted fur, the faint flash of white bone... the odor.

            He clutched at his arms until his fingers turned red and his arms turned white.  Faintly, he heard the screech of nails pried from splintering wood.  He was assaulted with another fresh wave of death.

            Bakura hadn't been a tomb robber in his past life for nothing.

            /**Wimp./  Bakura's voice snarled through his mind. /Pathetic **WEAKLING!**  Stop **whimpering** like that, you're distracting me!/**

            Ryou scrambled to clamp down the rising wave of nausea rolling sickeningly through the pit of his stomach.  But he couldn't keep a faint trembling note of hysteria from weaving itself through his mind link as he asked, //_Please_, Bakura, aren't you done yet?  You already have two bodies!//

            He knew he sounded weak, he knew he sounded pathetic, but for once he didn't care.  _Why_ couldn't he stop thinking about that cat...?

            /The Idiot and Marik won't cooperate unless they get their own bodies, too.  We need the power of our Items combined to inhabit these shells.  Now shut and let me **work, brat./**

            Ryou felt their mental link shut with a harsh snap.  Sinking dazedly to the floor of his soul room, he wrapped his arms tightly around his legs, letting his hair fall into his eyes.  

            So.  His yami was finally getting his own body. 

            He forced a smile on his face, because it seemed appropriate for the occasion.  He was happy.

            He wondered if he'd ever be able to scrub the stench of death from his skin.

**********

            The shampoo was smooth and slippery in his hands.  Ryou gently kneaded it into Bakura's hair, the silver-blue-lavender-white glimmering strands tangling and twisting silkily around his fingers.

            Bakura didn't like it when Ryou used scented shampoo on his hair, so the bottle of peach scented conditioner he'd bought for him after their first week of hair-washing lay plump and unused in the far corner of the stall.  Ryou paused momentarily to stare longingly at the damp orange bottle, but Bakura immediately stiffened, and in the hazy bond left over from their mind link, Ryou felt a vague _I know what you're thinking, don't you **dare pricking at the back of his mind.  Sighing in mock disappointment, he faintly smiled and prodded harder at his yami's head.  **_

            His smile grew as he breathed in the sharp, clean, uniquely Bakura-scent and watched pale blue soapy bubbles pile and slide wetly through his yami's water-slicked hair.  His fingers carefully kneaded Bakura's scalp, and he felt rather than heard the deep purr tremoring through the former spirit's throat.

            Ryou couldn't help but wonder at this new side of his counterpart.  He could still be as wrathful and icy as always, but there were moments like these when his barriers would suddenly collapse, leaving him quiet, not quite friendly, not quite vulnerable.  

            It had alarmed him, that first Wednesday when Bakura had sunk, pliant and hushed, into his bathtub.  He remembered kneeling, paralyzed, on the icy cold tiles of his bathroom floor, thinking that this damp, softened, quiet creature _couldn't_ be the same spirit who'd lurked, dark, sharp and lethal, in the back of his mind for so long.  He'd wondered frantically if something had happened to him while they'd been apart, wracking his brains for _some_ explanation for his yami's sudden open, fluid, loose posture.  He couldn't come up with anything.  

            Not that he minded the change.  In fact, every time he ladled a handful of water onto his spluttering, loudly protesting yami's head to wash out the soap, he had to restrain himself from kissing him.

~~~~~~~~~

            /Finally, I'll be rid of you./ Bakura's voice snarled in dark satisfaction in the hall of his soul room, curling around his legs and burrowing in his chest.  /We'll get what we've both wanted ever since we met each other./

            Ryou nodded distantly, sending a faint mental affirmative.  The comment stung, but he couldn't bring himself to acknowledge it.  He felt oddly numb, teetering here on the edge of his body's consciousness, straining to see through Bakura's eyes.  The images that came to him in the shadowed darkness were blurred and vague at best, but he thought he could make out three bodies stretched limply on the ground, and two other figures crouched over them.

            //Which one will you pick?// Ryou wondered, trying to sharpen his vision.  //None of them suit you.//

            /How would **you know what suits ****me_, _you insolent little.../**

            Ryou sighed.  //Because I **am you.  It's just that they don't... none of them really fit who... who you _are.//_**

            /And you think that you do?  Fit me, that is./  He could feel the shredding contempt lacing Bakura's voice.  

            Ryou frowned, and paused.  The Yami and Malik-shaped figures stood, took out their Items, turned towards Bakura.  Ryou glanced at the bodies again, flinching slightly as he did.  He struggled to see past the death-stilled glaze in their eyes, stared thoughtfully at their blurred, silent faces.  //No.  I suppose not.//

            /Good./  Bakura's voice curled, velvet-soft, into a dark mental smirk.  Ryou could hear the faint, familiar jangle of the Millennium Ring as his yami yanked it off his neck. /Well, I guess I'll be seeing you then, hikari.  Or perhaps not.  Ra only knows./

            That was the last thing Ryou heard before his universe erupted into blinding, wrenching pain.

***********

            The silence that had settled softly around them was comfortable, but Ryou decided to break it anyway.  His fingers stilled in Bakura's thick hair, and he gently prodded his head until he was half-facing him.  Dark cinnamon smoked eyes burned up at him, half-irritated, half-sleepy.  "What is it?"

            Ryou shifted his leg as some of the water trailing from Bakura's damp hair soaked into his shorts.  His chest suddenly felt too tight and his neck muscles bunched and tensed.  "I... it's just... I wanted to know what you've been doing with yourself.  I mean, I know you said it was none of my business before, and I guess it's not, but I... I think I have the right to know, you know?  As, as your hikari, I think I have that right.  Not that I'm worried about you, I mean, you can take care of y..."

            "Stop rambling, you idiot," Bakura said quietly, turning his head back to the wall.  "You sound like that whiny kid that follows the Priest everywhere."

            Ryou's mouth shut with a snap, eyes wide and hurt.  Inwardly he sighed in tired resignation, shoulders slumping.  He should have known better than to ask him anything...

            "And if you _must_ know," Bakura suddenly continued, his back tense, "I've been working with Marik."

            Ryou blinked and froze.  "Working," he repeated slowly, "With _Marik_!?"

            Bakura's fingers drummed against the side of the tub.  "We're becoming productive members of society," he said dryly.  "If we see anyone who's too wrapped in their earthly possessions, we return them to a good and pure state of simplicity."

            "Oh." Ryou said flatly.  "You're stealing."

            "That's one way of putting it."

            Ryou frowned, but remained silent.  His fingers lingered on Bakura's soft scalp.  Then he smiled.  "Fitting," he said quietly, and then continued washing.

~~~~~~~~~~

            Ryou's socks skidded over the slick wood floor as he rushed towards the door.  Who would be visiting him on a Wednesday night in this kind of weather??  Whoever it was, they must be getting soaked.

            He nearly tripped over the rug in the foyer.  Cursing his clumsiness under his breath, he wrenched the door open, and was immediately assaulted by the thrashing roar of the rainstorm and a blast of damp, cold air.  He didn't really mind it, though.  Actually, he didn't notice at all.

            Because Ryou suddenly found himself face to face with a very stiff, very angry, very wet version of himself.  He stared stupidly at the apparition, his jaw open, and the apparition stared sullenly back.

            After a while, it snarled, "Well, are you going to let me in or not?"

            Finally regaining use of his tongue, Ryou choked out, "B-Bakura!  You're... what are you... why do you look like m... I-I mean, come in!  Come in, you're soaked... I'll get you a towel, you look fro-"

           Bakura suddenly snapped his vise-like grip around Ryou's wrist, pinning him to the spot.  He leveled him with a dark, irritated glare.  "I need you to wash my hair."

            Ryou stared at him, frozen in mid-turn, not exactly sure he'd heard him correctly.  With his confused mind crashing rapidly into overload, he could only manage to croak out a dazed, "Huh?"

            Soot-black eyelashes narrowed, and Bakura let go of his wrist to yank at a clump of his sopping, matted hair.  "_This," he snarled, "I don't know how to __wash it.  I always went to sleep whenever you took a shower, remember?"_

            Ryou remembered.  "Oh," he said blankly.  "Um.  Okay."  Bakura had resurfaced after three long, empty weeks of separation... so he could _wash his _hair_???  And how on earth did he take on his form?  And __why?_

           Bakura, obviously fed up with being stared at as if he'd sprouted a second head, suddenly stalked towards the stairs, trailing puddles of rainwater in his wake.  He turned back when he reached the staircase, glaring angrily at his hikari.  "Well?  Are you coming?"

            Ryou nodded and trailed dazedly after him.  Bakura immediately slid into the bathroom, and he headed towards his room, where he started a frantic search for his only pair of swim trunks.  It wasn't going very well, since his mind was still buzzing furiously with confusion.  As much as he hated to admit it, part of him was glad to see the bristling homicidal megalomaniac.  The past few weeks had been echoingly dull and empty without that nagging voice filling the void in the back of his mind.  And it hadn't helped that their mind link had mostly been destroyed in the separation.

            He finally found the trunks under the radiator, where they must have fallen in August.  He couldn't choke back a snicker as he dusted them off, holding the blinding yellow rubber duckies up to the light.  He wasn't sure Bakura would be too pleased with them.

            He made his way back into the darkened hallway.  When he reached the closed bathroom door, he paused, frowning.  The question that had bothered him before suddenly resurfaced.  He still couldn't understand _how _the former spirit had gotten a body nearly identical to his.  Fidgeting uncomfortably, he hesitantly called out, "Um, Bakura?  Could I ask you a question?"

            There was a pause, then, "_What?_"

            Ryou cleared his throat, frowning.  It felt odd talking to his yami vocally.  "I was just wondering, how did you get that body?"

            Another pause.  "I made it," Bakura said gruffly.  

            Ryou stared.  "You... you _what?!?"  _

            "You heard me the _first_ time, idiot.  The other body didn't... didn't feel right.  So I adjusted it.  Why do you care, anyway?!" 

            Ryou wondered at the sudden overwhelming giddiness that swelled in his chest.  "Oh, no reason," he said quietly.  A slow smile spread over his face, and remained there as he gently pushed the bathroom door open and entered.  

************

            "You know," Ryou said hesitantly, pulling a brush through Bakura's damp hair, "they say...  they say that dogs don't like to look vulnerable in front of their enemies."

            Bakura glanced curiously up at him.  "So?"

            "So... that means you trust me, right?  We... we're not enemies."

            Bakura's eyes darkened and narrowed dangerously.  "We are if you're calling me a dog," he hissed.

            "Forget about the dog part.  I... I just want to know if you trust me."  Ryou nervously pushed some hair from his eyes, carefully watching his yami's face with worried eyes.

            Bakura's frown deepened, and he turned back to the wall, shoulders hunched.  "Well, you just answered the question for yourself, didn't you?" he scowled sullenly, picking at a scab on his left elbow.  "Not that I'm _vulnerable right now.  But... you're not... an enemy."  He struggled and stumbled over the last sentence, and the back of his neck was stained red.  _

            "Oh."  Ryou smiled, and gently brushed the tips of his fingers against the back of Bakura's neck.  "I think I can live with that."

*fin*


End file.
